


and if you have nightmares, we'll dance on the bed

by calamityrogers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky has a nightmare, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Soft Stucky Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 21:37:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19118182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calamityrogers/pseuds/calamityrogers
Summary: Bucky has a nightmare and goes to Steve for comfort.Somehow, they end up dancing.





	and if you have nightmares, we'll dance on the bed

**Author's Note:**

> it's late, i'm sad, and i can't get that song by jon bellion (guillotine) out my head, so here you go.

Steve wakes up. He blinks a few times before his eyes focus on the figure staring down at him.

“Bucky,” he mumbles softly. Bucky stays still and silent, the moonlight reflecting off his face making him look like a deer caught in headlights. His hand twitches, and Steve looks down to see the corner of his sheets clutched in his Bucky’s hand.

“I had. A nightmare,” he whispers. Steve has yet to get used to the way Bucky speaks now, stuck and stuttering, almost like a broken record player. They stay staring at each other, neither moving, just waiting to see what happens.

And then Steve moves closer to the edge of the bed and Bucky climbs in next to him. They lie stiff for a few minutes, both unsure of what to do. Steve’s not really sure what made Bucky come to him tonight. He’ll wake up sometimes and see Sam hovering over the spot where Bucky sleeps on the floor. Natasha’s there sometimes too, but she chooses to just sit up in bed and stare at him from across the room.

Bucky hasn’t talked to Steve since they found him. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Bucky moves beside Steve and he immediately reaches out and they position themselves so Bucky’s head is lying on Steve’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. The movement was automatic, like muscle memory, and Bucky reckons maybe it was. Maybe his muscles, or what’s left of them, can remember things from nights long ago that Bucky can’t.

Steve feels Bucky tense under his hands when he starts rubbing his thumbs in circles on Bucky’s scalp. He lets go.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve,” he says, and Bucky doesn’t know why his head feels so cold all of a sudden.

“No, it’s. Okay. It feels…Safe.” Bucky replies, and Steve returns his hands. They lie like that for a long time, maybe an hour, and Steve’s about to fall asleep again when Bucky’s voice yanks him back to reality.    

“Steve, you’re gonna stay with me, right?” he asks, and he sounds so much like himself, like the boy Steve knew back in ’35 that he nearly chokes on the air he’d breathed in a moment ago.

“Yeah. I’m never leaving you again,” he says, and Bucky slips his fingers into Steve’s.

“Steve, I’ve done Bad things. I have. Secrets. I’ve got so many bones in my closet.”

Bucky’s looking up at his friend now, and the look in his eyes is enough to shatter Steve’s heart into a million little pieces.

“So do I, Buck. So do I,” he says, the tears falling from his eyes carving glistening tracks in the grime on his cheeks. Bucky reaches up, and with a hand so gentle that you’d never be able to associate it with murder, wipes the tears away and pulls Steve closer, letting him cry into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, and Bucky shakes his head.

“It’s not your fault, kid,” he says, and that’s all Steve needs to hear. He calms down after a few minutes in Bucky’s arms, and he pulls away with a grin Bucky somehow knows means he’s got a terrible idea, but tonight, he doesn’t care.

“Hey Bucky,” he says, slowly getting up and standing on the bed. They’re still holding hands. “Wanna dance?”

Bucky hesitates, looking back and forth between where Steve’s towering above him and the bed where Sam and Natasha are sleeping. What the hell, he thinks. He hasn’t felt this good, this _normal_ , in a very long time. He doesn’t know what it is about Steve that makes him feel this way, but he wants more.

“M’kay,” he says, and stands up next to Steve. They stand still for a while, awkwardly staring at each other.

“There’s no music,” Bucky says.

“’ S no problem,” Steve says, jumping off the bed and grabbing his phone and a pair of earphones out of his bag. “Here. Put this in your ear, like this.” Steve demonstrates, and makes sure Bucky’s okay with it. He wants to laugh at how confused Bucky looks, but instead smiles down at his phone and presses play on a song.

Steve grabs Bucky’s hands and they start dancing as Bucky recognizes the song. His body moves like it’s got a mind of its own, and he lets it, figuring it’s the muscle memory acting up again. They dance for hours, listening to some songs they’d danced to countless times before the war, and some songs Steve had discovered while trying to catch up on all he’d missed after he came out the ice.

It’s when Steve starts jumping on the bed that things get chaotic. He slips and falls, and as an afterthought pulls Bucky down with him. They lie sprawled on top of one another, limbs intertwined, breathing heavily and laughing. Steve looks at Bucky.

“I love you,” he says, and he says it without thinking. Everything had been so normal between them, so comfortable, that Steve had forgotten that this wasn’t seventy years ago and they weren’t fooling around as they’d done on that one R&R mission where they’d gotten to stay in a room together above a bar in Europe.

He regrets it immediately when he feels Bucky tense up and start untangling himself from the mess of arms and legs on the bed.

“Please don’t go, Bucky. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve said that, I didn’t mean it-” Steve pleads, grabbing hold of Bucky’s arm.

“You’ve always been bad. At lying, Steve,” Bucky replies, shrugging Steve’s arm off. “But you’re. Right. You shouldn’t have said that.”

“Buck, please. I take it back. Just stay with me for tonight. Just one night, that’s all I ask, and tomorrow you can go back to not talking to me and sleeping on the floor, just… One night. Please.”

Bucky hesitates, his heart racing, not sure of how he feels, just that he can’t-

Not love. Anything but that.

“I’ll stay. But. You’re not allowed to say that word, okay?” he replies, trying to hide the way his hands are shaking.

“I won’t. I promise.”

Steve climbs into the bed again, waiting for Bucky to follow. They don’t touch each other again until Bucky holds Steve’s hand once he’s fallen asleep.

When Sam and Natasha wake up to the sounds the city coming alive outside and the sunlight streaming in from the window, they see Steve and Bucky fast asleep next to each other, their bodies intertwined in such a way that they form the shape of a heart underneath the covers. Bucky’s hair is splayed across the pillow, and it’s the most peaceful the soldier and the spy have ever seen him.

Steve’s got a smile on his face, and that’s something they haven’t seen in a very long time.

They let him sleep.

 

 


End file.
